Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Lemon rolls

Actually, these are what Junior initially wanted when he looked through Dough, but we didn't have any lemons in, so the bagels were the next choice. Lemons are now in stock, so it's lemon roll time.

You just need a 500g-of-flour batch of standard white dough and a couple of lemons. As you get to the end of your time working your dough, zest the lemons (I used my 5-holes-on-the-end-of-a-handle-like-a-peeler's-got zester to get wider strips rather than a little pile of shavings type zester) and work the strips through the dough as you finish it off.

Leave the dough to rest as usual, then divide into balls and after a rest of a few minutes, shape into lemon-shaped rolls and leave to prove on a pleated couche. Transfer onto a floured peel, score the tops (if you're me, you'll do it horribly cack-handedly while retaining hopes that you'll get the hang of it one day) and bake for about ten minutes.

It was in the transfer from the couche to the peel that my little board came into its own - manipulating the little puffed-up rolls just by hand is hard to do right, but it's so easy to roll them onto the board, then roll them off the board onto the peel. Hooray for the board.

These rolls have a wonderful lemony scent and taste fabulous - I was amazed at how much difference the addition of a tiny amount of another ingredient made. I let myself into the Brazil Nut's empty house and left a few of them on the worktop for her (I normally do this with a fougasse or similar) and she loved them too. I'll definitely do these again.